Crisis? What Crisis?

My coworker was having a rough day at work because that's the kind of stuff of which dreams are made.

The pressure had clearly gotten to her by the time she whirled around and said, "Emma! You have to teach me how to deal with stress. You're always so calm and collected."

I would have laughed if I hadn't been so dumbstruck.

Who the hell did she think she was talking to!? I actually looked around the room to make sure the school hadn't hired another Emma because I hate it when other people have the same name that I didn't choose for myself.

"Well, shit," I thought, "Now I have to tell her the truth."

I tried to explain to her that I'm not naturally the laid-back, patient, happy-go-lucky Stepford teacher she sees at work. There's some real rage boiling beneath my top knot.

Didn't she remember the time I walked into the workroom and yelled, "Fuck!" in front of my new boss?

But she did make a good point. I am eerily calm at work even on my worst days.

There are two reasons for this:

1. Spain

2. a special repression technique that I have been developing since childhood

The first reason might seem pretty obvious, but there's more to it than that. As someone who has had everything handed to her in life, I didn't experience any real struggles until I went to Spain and even those were by choice. Finding a job, a place to live, friends, doctors, dealing with communication barriers, teaching myself how to teach a language to people spread all over a foreign city and basically not knowing what the fuck was going on at any given moment for a year straight wasn't easy.

But it also wasn't that hard. Having actual challenges taught me to recognize when something really wasn't a problem. If I'm not going to die, it's not a problem. Something like that. Also, Spain is chill as shit, and I even lived in what is known as the most uptight region.

Child's play compared to the United States of Anal Retention.

Which leads me to this other thing that really creeps me out. When I was a kid, I didn't hold anything in. The bad feeling entered, I exercised it out pea soup style, and I was totally fine seconds later. That doesn't work well in a classroom environment mostly because I would be vomiting (screaming) a constant stream of soup into students' faces for an entire hour and ten minutes. Then I'd have a ten minute break. Then I'd vomit for an hour and ten minutes. Then a generous thirty minute lunch hour...vomit...and so it goes on like this my entire career.

Instead, I prefer to absorb stress into my body and have it manifest itself in other ways. I don't even feel it. It's awesome.

I just get really sick once every other year, snap at Jaime for touching my ear or have nightmares that I'm going to miss my flight, and I'm running through the terminal trying to find my gate, and no one will fucking help me. Like I said, it's awesome.

But I didn't tell her all that. I just told her to move to Spain. Crisis? What crisis? It's fine.

Me when I'm teaching how to do a works cited page.

School of Wife Witchcraft and Wizardry

I sent my husband to work in a pair of booty shorts with skulls all over them today.

I expressed my concern about his underwear as he made his way to the bathroom, and he shot back that they were the only clean ones he had left because someone (I can only assume he meant me) hadn't done the laundry like she'd been promising for three days.

Clearly, I am not the keeper of Jaime's dirty underwear. He doesn't expect me to do any more or any fewer domestic tasks than he does, but I do expect that of myself.

And it's not because I am the keeper of the vagina. It's because he works way more hours than I do. It was my idea. Even-steven. Fair, square and seven years ago.

On paper, communism is a great idea, too.

My father fancies himself a domestic goddess and spent many years trying to convince me that things like cooking, cleaning and dressing like a lady is fun. I didn't buy what he was carpet bagging as a child, but after years of real world experiences, I can finally say that I was absolutely a genius kid.

It's still impossible to convince myself to like doing domestic work that I promised to do, but it is possible, I've learned, to sometimes convince my partner that I'm doing stuff around the house that I'm so clearly not. I've decided to call it wife witchcraft.

We just moved to an awesome new place, and I spent a long time arranging the kitchen and adjusting everything to my height. I do most of the cooking now because Jaime gets home so late. Lies.

It's because he puts three carrots in a bowl, covers it with spinach and calls it dinner.

Anyway, I finished the kitchen. I looked around. I suggested we walk to the Indian restaurant around the corner. He agreed. Did zero laundry. Wife witchcraft.

I didn't do the laundry the next day because the people below us left their clothes in the machine. It's rude to dump them all out. This is not college, and this is not the Dirty Hands United for Constantly Smoking Marijuana Cigarettes and All Day Video Gaming Co-op where we used to live. I didn't do it. Wife witchcraft.

Instead, I spent the afternoon wrangling a dining room table that seats six, cost me $25 dollars and required both of my parents and their truck. Jaime got home, dropped his keys on it, turned to me and started talking about his day. I interrupted and asked if he liked the huge table that I texted him about then inserted into the giant hole of a dining room we once had. "Oh!" he exclaimed. "I didn't even notice!" Husband sorcery.

The next day, I had to paint a mural in the dining room then paint over it then paint one over the fireplace instead, so I couldn't possibly have done the laundry that day. He loved the mural. Wife witchcraft.

I did, however, make brownies. They were a box mix. I hated making them, and they were pretty gross. His mom asked me for the recipe over Skype. Wife witchcraft?

I don't think that one counts.

But skull booty shorts on a man who wears a helmet when he bikes to work and is supposed to be taken seriously as a medical researcher is where I draw the line. I'm doing the laundry now, but I'm also writing a blog about it, so I'm taking forever to get it done, but I am doing it, so it's almost done.

Jaime didn't sign up for a witch wife.

However, he did choose this week of all weeks to bend down, kiss my head and say, "I couldn't possibly have ever found a better wife than you."

 Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to fold this in the hour I have before he gets home, so I can rub it in his stinking face. 

Image swiped from: http://artjetset.com/2010/05/

Vaya Con Dios Part 2 of 2

So, like I said, eight hours later, and we were on our way...to Arkansas.

Por que Arkansas, you might ask? Porque there's a museum there that we wanted to see. Also, Jaime is in the stage of immigration when it's cool to collect new states. This is, after all, the guy who once exclaimed, "I LOVE Southwest Kansas!"

Whatever, dude.

But it's this kind of enthusiasm for the unremarkable that made me fall in love with him, so when he said, "Yeah! Book a cheap hotel with a pool!," I did it.

The first thing I did after we checked in was ignore my partner completely while I checked my messages, but the second thing was put the gallon of milk I'd brought from home in the mini fridge.

The milk, to my chagrin, was the only thing Jaime requested when I asked him what snacks he wanted me to pack.

He made fun of the peanut butter and jelly sandwiches I'd thought to bring but ate two before we'd left the city along with some nectarines and dozens of grapes along the way. But did he take a single sip of milk? No, of freaking course not.

I figured he'd drink it in the morning.

I squished my body into my bathing suit and padded barefoot over to Jaime who was lying on the hotel comforter because ain't no party like a Perales Green party cause a Perales Green party is gross.

Thirty minutes later, we were standing poolside, and thirty and a half minutes later, we had deemed it too cold. The look of extreme anxiety that overtook the one guy in the hot tub's face as we approached him was too much. We ignored it and claimed the quadrant furthest from his children.

The strange guy got out quickly, but that meant that Jaime had to half-heartedly toss back the stranger children's beach ball whenever it landed in our over chlorinated pee water like a bored uncle. We quickly ceded the hot tub to a family of ladies who were even more unamused by us and settled into sweet, sweet air-conditioned sleep right after my husband deemed us vegetarians.

"Is fish okay?" I asked. "Fuck no!" he answered. "Okay then," I agreed knowing exactly how this was going to go.

In the morning, I cleaned up the milk that had hilariously leaked all over the fridge, and we went to enjoy a free breakfast with about a million other people. Jaime was eye balling the bacon, and I reminded him that he wasn't allowed per his vegetarian deemnation. He got sad.

Before we went inside the museum, we took advantage of the cool morning to do some hiking, as the grounds are surrounded by trails and a lovely forest. It was boring (I'm kidding!), so we bounded down the stairs letting our extremities go limp until we heard someone coming. Then we did it again. And some more times.

The museum was nice. We learned things, and we gave up at exactly the same time.

Jaime commanded the GPS to take us "home," and as we drove through the green hills of Northern Arkansas and Southern Missouri thankful for all the rain we got this summer, he asked if I wanted to stop and get catfish sandwiches.

Guys, I married Keanu.

Vaya Con Dios Part 1 of 2

I don't think I'm ever as happy with Jaime as I am when we're moving at high speeds.

I love flying with him, driving with him and riding on trains built way too small for him, but I always fit, so it's fine. We've never been on a boat together we just realized. That might actually cause a divorce. We'll see.

It's not that we're good travelers so much as good travel buddies. We want to pursue the same completely irrational feats but give up on them at exactly the same times, and last weekend was no different.

We made Friday an early night so that we could leave for Arkansas at the ass crack of dawn (8ish). I was pretty proud of Jaime who required minimal nagging to get out the door. He even said he would drive! However, he was very quickly not so proud of me when he heard the nasty sound our car made when driven above 60 mph. I'm usually the one who drives it, so I should know better.

In my defense, our coffee pot broke earlier in the week, and I thought an early morning road trip was an ideal time to kick my habit.

No.

He was right. I was wrong. Let's not fucking dwell on it.

Less than an hour later, I was on the phone with Chopper. He told me to bring it on in because they could at least diagnose the problem though he reckoned they wouldn't have time to fix it.

Jaime wasn't in the mood to talk to me. I had no idea why. I asked Chopper if he knew where I could get some coffee, and before I could pretend to try to stop him, he darted over to the cafe next door that I had already noticed wouldn't be open for another two hours. He banged on the back door, and all I heard was, "Jesus! I was jus' checkin'." I was grateful ta him for tryin'.

The guy who wasn't called Chopper told us that he recommended that we not drive to Arkansas seeing as how our front driver's side wheel was about to fall off and all. We thanked them, gave them twenty bucks and agreed that fixing it might be the better option over death.

We drove back to the city then into Kansas City, Kansas cause Jaime knew a guy who knew a guy. Sounded legit.

We spent the next five hours chilling in the Hispanic barrio.

That was the day that I learned without a doubt that Jaime is not a Latino. It may have been the gringo wife, or the fact that he informed the mechanic that he'd "bringo" the car around, but no one gave two shits about speaking to him in Spanish. Can you blame them? I can't. We just ate our tamales, drank our "100% sugar!" tamarind soda, napped on a picnic bench and pretended we weren't to blame for the economic conditions of the neighborhood. I think they believed us.

We got the call to pick up our car, and we were totally not shocked but still annoyed that it was more expensive than we thought. My conquistador pulled out his debit card only to be told that it was a cash only operation.

How freaking fabulous!

We found an ATM. No receipt from the mechanic. But it didn't make the noise anymore.

Eight hours after we were supposed to begin this bitch of a trip...Vamos? Vamos.

No.

You know that word association game when one person says a word and the other person says the first word that comes to mind?

Bra

What was your word?

I'm not playing with myself, but I'm pretty sure my word would be, "No." And that's not just my id talking. That includes my ego and superego.

Shortly after weaseling my way into my first brassiere, a hand me down that was too big, I began to shun them.

Because, not to be dramatic about it, but bras slowly suck out my soul through my breasts, expire it through the polluted air of the city and cram it back into my body through hooks, straps, elastic and clasps. They are also expensive.

I once took off a red sports bra during a middle school softball practice because the underwire was making it impossible for me to concentrate on fielding balls.

My hyper sensory issues and total lack of athletic ability aside, why the hell was I wearing a bra with a goddamn underwire!? I don't remember if a teammate hung it on the wall of the dugout in an attempt to embarrass me (lol), but I do remember the feeling of the breeze going in one arm hole, igniting the line of sweat under my tiny boobs and going out the other. It felt like freedom. Like the freedom of not giving a single shitty shit that Emma's Secret was smacking against chain link for all to see.

And I've kept that feeling with me.

Every rare time I have worn a bra in my adulthood, it has been for someone else. It has been so you wouldn't have to see my nipples through the sheerness of my top or because you (students) have no self control and are turned on by the natural movement and pointy shape of my breasts.

I take that back. I have a wool sweater that chafes my boob hats (Parks and Rec reference), and that hurts me, so that is definitely for myself. But no other time! The rest of the times are for you!

And I will never wear one so that you will not be grossed out. Not important to me. Not important at all.

You is not actually you. You are cool. But you know who is not cool? The shop owner who asked me how old I was, and after hearing the answer, said well then I'd better start wearing a bra.

In her defense, I think she thought that I should be concerned about sagging. Truth time. I'm not.

I realize that a lot of women feel more comfortable wearing a bra because they have large chests, gravity is winning the good fight or for lots of other reasons. This post isn't to convince anyone that they shouldn't wear a bra.

This post is to convince everyone that I have a great rack.

I forced Jaime to impartially feel them last night, and though he did not agree they were the breasts of a fifteen-year-old (in retrospect, I should not have used those words because it made him uncomfortable), he did agree that they were, in fact, very perky and dense.

I understand that I've never had my glands filled with milk, I'm a solid member of the B team, and even though I tell people I'm 30, I'm not yet. Don't hate on me for using this to my advantage.

I'm going to ride this train as far as it carries me (and maybe even way past my stop) because no one gets hurt and I feel awesome when I'm not wearing a bra and significantly less awesome when I am. Why would anyone have to explain anything beyond that?

I mean, sure. I'm bigger than a Tyler and Putin 

(more like a size Nicholson/Rourke). I wonder where they get their bras? 

America. Fuck Yeah.

Jaime and I live in the United States for exactly two reasons: my family lives here and the crisis (pronounced creesees, what creesees?) in Spain.

But during our walk to watch the Republican debate at our friends' place, we started discussing the American Dream while carrying a pineapple from Costa Rica and popcorn made with palm oil.

Are we living it? We wondered. We have jobs at universities, our one bedroom apartment has running utilities albeit no central air or working oven and we're both almost insured. We're tickling thirty and don't have kids, but we do have an infant marriage. Debt free and we don't live pay check to pay check. Sounds like a fucking dream to me, and I'm not even being sarcastic.

The American Dream is supposed to be subjective, right?

I mean, don't get me wrong, I don't actually believe in the damn thing because the Jesuits told me it was all a lie, but you know who does? Jaime's padre.

Unlike my own padre, he wanted his sons to sail across the Atlantic to achieve success and high salaries. Alfredo, I see you, I love you, I feel you. I get it.

My brother-in-law and husband are brilliant people who deserve all the success that they will absolutely get in their lifetimes, but what have they given up?

No honey, you will not get the month of August off to surf and swim among the orange groves. 

Please talk to your new boss about how much time you get for Christmas. I really don't know if it will be enough to visit your family and dog. 

Sweetheart, I know that healthcare is a basic human right and so do you, but we still have to pay a shit ton of money for it. 

We couldn't afford children even if we did want them because we won't get maternity/paternity leave. 

No, we can't just "get another degree." That will cost tens of thousands of dollars. 

Anyway, we sort of watched the debate.

Nine men with ghastly fake tans plus Ben Carson all having achieved or been born into the American Dream saying some of the dumbest fucking shit I have ever heard.

If this is what the big AD is supposed to look like...

Imma gonna pass. Mkay?

Driving Ms. Jaime

I thought I'd be at least fifty years old before I found myself nervously waiting for my baby to finish his driver's test.

But there I was, sitting next to a middle-aged man and his tiny granddaughter while my thirty-year-old husband, who's been driving since the age of 18, circled downtown with a smokin' examiner.

He was waiting for his wife, so we felt each other. The conversation eventually turned to the detention center across the street. "Man, that's a bad, bad place," he said. My white privilege answered, "Yeah, I wouldn't want to work there!" I'm no fool, I watch OTNB. "Well, I wouldn't want to be there again." Dammit. I'm a fool.

Jaime pulled up right as a bunch of former guests were being released out onto the sidewalk. I guess one could describe the atmosphere as euphoric. Jaime's hot cop assumed that he was afraid of them, but he explained to her that he was just startled by the excitement. I think it was because his nerves were totally shot.

For months, we'd been talking about his license, and for weeks, he'd been driving me crazy about it.
"How exactly would you describe this sign?"
Stop.
"Mmm-hmm. And what exactly are they going to ask me at all times?" 
I don't remember. I was 15.
"Unacceptable."

I'd been doing most of the driving for months. He has a Spanish liscense, as well as an international driving permit, but the United States is better than every country combined, so we were worried about him being pulled over with foreign documents.

I was so proud of my giant baby when he happily bounded out of our giant Buick, though I really shouldn't have been because of course the man can drive a damn car. I was also excited that he was going to stop peppering me with questions he already knew the answers to, but I was mostly excited that he'd be driving a lot more.

False.

Now it's, "Oh god! We're in his blind spot! Pass! Pass!" or "This guy is not giving me the proper three seconds! He's eating my ass right up!"

My husband might be a neurotic driver, but he's also a great one. Therefore, I'm happy to splay out in the passenger seat when he lets me because we still argue over who has to drive much to my chagrin.

I am a passenger.  (link)